Turquie Newroz 2008

Kurds, Police clash in Southeast Turkey; 2nd demonstrator killed

23 March 2008

A second demonstrator has been shot dead during clashes between Turkish police and Kurdish protesters in southeastern Turkey.

Celebrations marking the Kurdish New Year, Nowroz, have turned into protests supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, during the past three days.

Demonstrations and clashes with Turkish police have been reported in Van, Yusekova and other cities.

Turkish police say at least 60 people, including protesters and officers, were injured in clashes on Saturday. Police say they detained at least 160 people.

Kurdish activists often use the Nowroz festival – a traditional new year celebration that marks the arrival of spring – to highlight demands for autonomy and other rights.

Vidéo Reuters

Riot police detain 130 kurdish protesters in Turkey. After clashes leave dozens injured

Saturday, March 22, 2008

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Police said Saturday they detained 130 people after Kurdish protesters chanting support for separatist guerrillas clashed with police in eastern Turkey leaving dozens injured.

Kurdish men hurled rocks at riot police who protected themselves with plastic shields, television film from the Cihan news agency showed. Police later fired tear gas to disperse the crowd and beat some of the protesters, the footage showed.

Mehmet Salih Kesmez, police chief of the eastern province of Van, said 38 protesters and 15 police officers were injured. Four, including a police officer, were seriously hurt and were being treated in an intensive care unit, he said.

Protesters had gathered early Saturday in the city of Van, near Turkey’s border with Iran, to celebrate the Nowruz festival marking the beginning of spring. Some Turkish Kurds use the festival to highlight their demand for autonomy.

The group soon started chanting slogans supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, police said. The party, known as the PKK, has waged a guerrilla war against the government for Kurdish autonomy since 1984.

Riot police intervened, ordering the group to end the celebration, but the group continued chanting slogans, police said.

« We warned those people who chanted slogans for the terrorist organization, » Kesmez said. He said the police moved in after protesters refused to disperse and threw stones at officers.

Officers trying to disperse the crowd used truncheons to hit dozens of men, Cihan showed.

Several women in traditional Kurdish outfits were sitting on a sidewalk, encircled by police officers, and an officer kicked one of the women, the film showed.

Skirmishes broke out during similar celebrations across Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeastern region on Friday. Nowruz is traditionally celebrated on March 21.

In Diyarbakir, protesters shouted slogans on Friday praising the imprisoned PKK leader, but police did not intervene. At the close of the festival, dozens of Kurdish youths threw stones at police.

The PKK wants political and cultural autonomy for Kurds in southeastern Turkey, and the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since it began in 1984.

The government plans to spend up to US$12 billion (euro8 billion) on dam and irrigation projects in the next five years to improve agriculture in the mostly rural area and to launch a television channel with Kurdish-language broadcasts.

The European Union has said Turkey must relax cultural restrictions on Kurds and take other steps to improve their lives to meet the criteria for membership.

Injuries mount in protests by Turkish Kurds

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

DIYARBAKIR: Several people were injured on Monday as fresh violence erupted in two Turkish cities following the deaths of two Kurdish protestors at the weekend, security sources and witnesses said. Clashes broke out in Van, in eastern Turkey, when thousands of protesters tried to march through the streets to denounce the death of a 35-year-old man from a bullet wound he sustained during a protest at the weekend.

Police used batons Monday to beat back the demonstrators – members of Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party – in Van on the ground that their march was illegal.

Witnesses said the ensuing scuffles left several protestors injured while several others were detained.

There were similar scenes in Yuksekova town in the country’s southeast, where demonstrators protested a heavy police clampdown on a similar gathering in the town over the weekend which left a 20-year-old man dead.

Riot police used tear gas on the protestors who pelted officers with stones. Some reporters were injured in the clashes, witnesses said.

Dozens of people have been detained at the weekend in Turkey‘s mainly Kurdish southeast where celebrations to mark March 21 – the Kurdish New Year – degenerated into protests in favor of the armed separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara lists as a terrorist group.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey’s southeast.

The Ney Year is a traditional platform for Turkey’s Kurds to demonstrate support for rebels and demand broader rights. Celebrations have been relatively calm in recent years, but in 1992 about 50 people died in clashes in the southeast.

More recently, in 2002, two men were crushed to death in a police crackdown on demonstrations in Mersin. – AFP